Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on January 13, 2009
Enterprise and Society 2009 10(3):423-448; doi:10.1093/es/khn117
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"Making Connections": Insights into Relationship Marketing from the Australasian Stock and Station Agent Industry
SIMON VILLE is a professor of economics at the School of Economics, Faculty of Commerce, University of Wollongong, Australia
Contact information: School of Economics, Faculty of Commerce, University of Wollongong, Wollongong NSW 2522, Australia; E-mail: sville{at}uow.edu.au
Relationship marketing has received little attention from business historians who have favored the study of branding, associational advertising, market research, and the role of marketing agencies, particularly in relation to modern consumer manufacturing. Although the term relationship marketing is of recent origin, we analyze its practice under a different guise, "connections," over several centuries: we draw on the extensive archival evidence of a rural business services industry in Australia and New Zealand. Relationship marketing's emphasis upon close and enduring individual customer relationships mitigated uncertainty of performance and behaviour, on both sides of the transaction, created by a long and geographically extended supply chain. The success of these relationships contributed to the primary industry–led economic development of both nations.
He researches the economic and business history of Britain, Europe, and Australasia. Recent publications include The Rural Entrepreneurs: A History of the Stock and Station Agent Industry in Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge University Press 2000), winner of the Bruce McComish prize; and, with G. Fleming and D. Merrett, The Big End of Town: Big Business and Corporate Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
I am grateful to Dr. Steve Jones and Professor Gordon Boyce for helpful comments on this paper, to Dr. Natalia Nikolova for assistance with locating some of the literature on relationship marketing, to Andrew Parnell for archival research, and to Sarah Endacott for stylistic feedback.